


This Heart Is Burning Up

by j_gabrielle



Series: Potter's Hand [6]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Insecurities, Lecter family feels, M/M, they need to have better communication
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-02
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-10 05:17:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/782255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/j_gabrielle/pseuds/j_gabrielle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will meets the enigmatic Lady Murasaki</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title shamelessly stolen from Walk The Moon's Tightrope

Mischa Lecter drives a Bentley Continental.

‘Of course she does.’ Will thinks shortly as she unlocks her car. Hannibal runs a hand over the matte finish, smirking at his sister. ‘What have I gotten myself into?’

Hannibal eyes her car appreciatively, and not without a glint in his eyes that suggests that perhaps a hefty check will be written some time in the future. Will rolls his eyes inwardly, slipping into the backseat, determined not to sink into the buttery leather seats. He isn’t going to dictate the purchases of a man he still isn’t quite sure of his footing with.

It is a short drive to wherever their destination is. He keeps his eyes focused on the landscape, watching out for landmarks in case he (for whatever reason) needs to run away from the Lecters. Will repeatedly clenches and unclench his hands into fists; a trick that Hannibal himself (the irony) had taught him at the beginning of their sessions together. Not for the first time, the feeling of unease taking root in his heart.

He pushes his glasses up his nose.

Will’s French comprehension is rudimentary at best, but he makes out that they must be somewhere in the millionaire community of Paris that he had read of once in a magazine of his mother’s. Expertly trimmed hedges spring up around glass and steel houses, gates and glimpses of toys that were the cost of a small nation’s GP. The Lady Murasaki that Hannibal and Mischa were coming to meet must be someone very important and very rich.

Murasaki. It wasn’t exactly European, or even Western. A Japanese name for an exotic aunt? Hannibal certainly had not left many clues pertaining his past lying around for him to find.

The Lecter siblings seemed to have forgotten that he was in the car with them, their voices rising a falling in their mother tongue. Will tries not to feel a little left out, but fails spectacularly when he hears Mischa halt in the middle of a sentence. “Perhaps we should not be so rude as to exclude Will from our discussions, brother dear.” Her voice soft and kind in the claustrophobic interior of the car, and Will catches her eye in the mirror. He looks away, unable to bring himself to understand the look that is in her eyes.

“Ah, yes. I’m sorry.” Hannibal leans over, smiling apologetically, reaching a hand over and covering Will’s bony knee. “I did not mean to ignore you.”

“It’s alright.” Will answers shortly, letting his glasses slip a little on his nose. If the motion causes Hannibal to frown briefly, he does not notice.

Silence reigns, and Will is acutely aware that whatever it was that they’d been discussing before, it was not meant for his ears.

Mischa turns left, bringing the car into a shaded path. The trees here grow close and tight to each other, blocking out the sun. An ornate gate grows closer and closer, opening automatically as they came within a few feet of it. Will finds it hard to hide the starry eyed expression as the car comes to a stop in front of a grand mansion that seemed far more beautiful in age than the modern structures that neighbour it.

Will gets out and stares up on its’ façade when he sees the face at the window. “Will.” Hannibal places a hand on the small of his back. “Come on now.”

He looks away, nods twice, watching Mischa as she walks up to the brass lion’s head knocker. The door opens a bare second later, and they walk into the shade of a marble foyer. “It’s just like how I remembered it.” Hannibal sighs from next to him.

“You’ve lived here before?” Clench. Unclench. Clench.

Hannibal pulls him close, pressing the lines of their bodies together. “Yes. I came here when I was sixteen. My uncle Robertas adopted me and brought me here.”

Will looks over to Mischa, noting that she was watching her brother. “And Mischa?”

“She only came a year later.”

Will is not blind. And he isn’t so stupid to assume that the silence between the Lecter siblings was anything but the solemnity of a shared history. Briefly, he flirts with the idea of asking Hannibal about it. It never fails to twist him in the gut whenever the instances of their uneven footing in life comes to the surface, especially when he knows that without a shadow of a doubt that Hannibal will definitely tell him if only he’d be a little braver and ask about it.

Unclench.

“Hannibal.”

The first thought that crosses Will’s mind at the sight of her at the head of the stairs was that she was beautiful. Her porcelain smooth features soften as she smiled, descending rapidly from her perch. The kimono robe she wears blooms and flows with her movements like great painted wings, mesmerizing.

“ _Obachan_.” Will does not miss the note of fondness in Hannibal’s voice as he leaves his side and moves to wrap her in an embrace.

Mischa slips quickly into his side, taking his hand and whispering, “Our aunt, the Lady Murasaki.” There is a smile on her lips, and there could never be any mistaking the high esteem the siblings have for their foreign aunt.

“And you must be Hannibal’s William.” She says, her accent thick over her words. Will moves forward on autopilot, unsure.

“Y-Yes.” He swallows, refraining from looking to Hannibal for reassurance. “But if anything, Hannibal is William’s.”

Lady Murasaki laughs a clear bell like sound. She comes closer, taking Will’s hands between her smaller gentle palms. “I like him, Hannibal! You’ve made a good decision with this one.” She declares with a happy twinkle in her chocolate brown eyes. “Come. Join me for some tea.”

She links their arms together and pulls him up the stairs. Not wanting to disrupt the tentative balance, Will follows and is two steps up before he realises that Hannibal isn’t coming along.

“I have something I have to do.” Hannibal says shortly, inclining his head. “Auntie will take care of you.”

Clench.

“Can’t I come with you?” Will says before he could stop himself. Immediately, he feels the bright burn of shame coursing through his veins. He was embarrassing Hannibal by letting his immaturity show. Will is on the verge of panicking and running out those doors.

Lady Murasaki’s delicate hand on his is what keeps him from leaping down and demanding Hannibal take him along with him. “There are some things that we can’t share even with the light of day.” She soothes gently. Will keeps his eye contact with Hannibal before breaking it, leading the Lady up her stairs.

If he feels a little betrayed, that was his secret to keep.

“Will…” He hears his name being called.

“He won’t be long. He’ll be back.” The delicate hand on his squeezes with a surprising strength. “Let him go now.” She whispered. Will nods twice, still confused and unhappily.

They continue their ascend, and Will does not look back.

She guides him to a warmly decorated room. The Asian influences of the mats on the floor, the smouldering incense on the fireplace and the paintings made it obvious that this was Lady Murasaki’s personal space.

She lets him wander around, studying the paintings on the walls, the books and the china. When they hear the sound of the car starting, she does not stop him when he rushes to the window to watch it disappear down the driveway.

“Sit.” She instructs, patting down on the space next to her as she sinks to the cushions on the floor. “Kris?” She calls out.

A young girl shuffles into the room, in her hand a tray of sandwiches and petit fours. Another girl, slightly older, follows closely behind on her heels with a tray of her own that was laden with a pot of the steaming beverage and two fragile teacups.

“English tea is a particular weakness of mine.” The Lady confesses with a deprecating smile, “I have many other teas, of course. But for teatime, this kind is best.”

Will sits opposite her, watching as her slender hands prepare their teas. He offers to pour their tea, but Lady Murasaki merely smiles as she does it herself. “It is not that I doubt your ability to pour our cups of tea, dear. It is merely because I am your hostess and as such I will pour the first cups.” She grins, “Though you have my permission to pour our next cups, if you so wish.”

“Thank you.” Will mutters as he accepts his eggshell of a teacup.

Lady Murasaki waits until he has drunk his first sips before asking, “So, are you in love with my nephew? Or are you just using him.”

Unclench.

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologise at the lateness of this. Perhaps it is not an excuse, but RL blew up around me.
> 
> //leaves this here and runs away//

The tea sloshes, spilling over its’ saucer and staining the pristine white table cloth. Will sputters, feeling the flame of embarrassment and indignation burn on his face.

“I’m sorry?” He chokes, setting his cup on the table. _Using_ Hannibal? The mere notion… As if anyone could _use_ Hannibal! Will pushes at his glasses, trying to calm his breathing. He isn’t sure whether he should be offended for himself, or for Hannibal.

For her part, Lady Murasaki merely smiles serenely, offering over a napkin. “William, forgive my forwardness. But you must understand my worries.” Setting down her own cup, she looks at him, quiet. “Hannibal has always been… Special. To both my husband and I. We have no children of our own. And they are the closest things to blood relations either one of us will ever have. I care and worry about them as much as a mother would. Though he came to us in his teens, he is as much my little boy.” Will briefly smirks at the thought of Hannibal as a little boy.

“He never speaks of the years he had spent in that horrible orphanage, and every time we try to ask him or Mischa, they would…” A frown creases her brow, and she looks troubled. “They never speak of it. It is as if they’ve known something terrible and they are both determined to never let their secrets breathe the air. When they were first reunited, Hannibal would hardly let Mischa out of his sight. He watched her like a hawk, became her shadow. We could hardly separate them. And then one day…”

Will lets the snowy silence hang between them. “Where have they gone? Where have they gone really?”

“They’ve gone hunting.” Comes the answer. “Perhaps this will be the prey that finally silences the devil that haunts their minds.”A smile tugs on the corners of her perfect red lips, “Please do not think me so ignorant to their… _hobbies_. Who did you think helped cover up their tracks before they became adept in doing so for their selves?”

“So you know?”

She covers her mouth and giggles, amused. Her brown eyes filled with mirth. “You could say that I have always been aware as to what my children were up to. Considering that the first person they’d ever killed was because of me.”

He clenches his hand into a fist. Unease brews and bubbles close to the surface, and he has to look out the window and away from her gentle eyes.

“I feel like I hardly know him sometimes.” Will whispers, thumbing at the tea stains. When the words leave him, he wants to take them back and stuff them back into the box he keeps in his darkest places. But the relief of finally being able to speak about Hannibal to someone who isn’t here to judge blankets him, and he finds the words escaping faster than he could stop them. “He… I’ve only known him for awhile. He knows everything about me, but Hannibal is a mystery to me and I don’t think it is fair. I feel as if the scales between us have always been unbalanced. Has he…?”

“Told me about you? About how he met you? Yes, William.”

Will is unable to fight the bubble of hysterical laughter that forces its’ way out of his chest. “Do you… Do you approve?”

She blinks at this, taking her time to construct her answer. “I can’t say that I do.”

Lady Murasaki’s hand on his is a surprise, as is she leaning over and forcing him to look her in the eye. “But you mustn’t listen to me, William. That child is slow to trust and quick to close the door to his heart. This is as new to him as it is to you.” She ducks her head, smiling wryly. “And you might not realise it just yet, but he has given you something that he has never given to anyone else.”

Sitting back down and tucking a stray lock of her raven black hair behind her ear, “I suspect that your trip here to Paris is no coincidence. Just like how Mischa happens to find the last of their list when her older brother happens to be in the city.”

Lifting the pot of tea, she pours Will a new cup. “I see the way he looks at you. I have heard the way he speaks your name.”

“And what does all that tell you?” He mumbles, closing his eyes tiredly. Emotions and questions he would rather not have to deal with churn deep in him. He wants to lie down and sleep; feeling as if he has just gone twelve rounds in the ring with no end in sight.

“That is Hannibal’s to tell.”

Will squints at her, uncaring if he was appearing rude. She smiles at him benignly, goading him to persist in his line of queries. Not wanting to be drawn into her neatly laid trap, he bites down on his bottom lip, fingering the rim of his cup. “It’s the former.” At Lady Murasaki’s questioning look, “To answer your question from earlier. It’s the former. That’s why I’m with him, why I will always be with him. No matter what happens between us, that will always be… How I feel about him.” He feels the blush from before beginning to paint his cheeks crimson hot.

“Then I am glad.” She said softly.

The hypnotic ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway lulls a sense of dreamy state in Will. Smoke from the incense coil deep around his senses, dropping him further into Morpheus’ waiting shores. Will does not notice that he is nodding off until he feels Lady Murasaki’s slender fingers carding through his hair, pressing him back to the soft flesh of her silk covered thighs.

“Hush now, dear William. Sleep. I will wake you when your heart returns.”

And he does.

 

 

[end]


End file.
